Darryl Gillespie has won 100 games as the head coach of the Radford High School girls soccer team, and he hopes to add a few more wins this season, as it will be his last.
His team was 11-4-1 in 2017, and he is excited about a team that returns 10 starters.
“We lost two players from last year’s team with one playing Division I soccer at USC Upstate. We return 10 Starters from last year’s team and will start two freshmen that can be exciting to watch,” he said
Radford is one of several area high school teams that should contend for district and regional titles this spring.
Madison Page returns for the Bobcats and has been their leading scorer for the past two years, but this year she will have a lot of help.
“Last year we could never find the chemistry that we needed. We had the players put I didn’t do a good job or getting the right players in the right position,” Gillespie, who is 101-18-4 in six years at Radford, said. “This year we will be much deeper and have a lot of options on where to play each player.
“If we find the right combination we should be able to play with anyone. James River will be the team to beat in the district. They knocked us out of the region last year, and they have an outstanding goalie and they are well coached.”
At Blacksburg, Travis Eschenmann has reloaded on a team that lost in the state semifinals last season. After bringing home the state title in 2016. Eschenmann lost two all-world players from a team that was 18-3-1.
“From last season’s team, we graduated a highly accomplished senior in Hannah Elias (all-state first team) and a transfer Junior in Leah Beyer. Both players were important to our team’s defensive make-up, and it will be critical that we have girls step up into these roles,” the Bruins coach said.
Eschenmann is 183-32-7 in 11 years (an 85 percent winning percentage) and will return seven seniors this season.
“Offensively, we have everyone back and we are looking forward to improving upon our 2017 offensive performance where we felt as though we did not play up to our abilities. There were several key games where we did not generate goal scoring opportunities to help us win games. With another year of experience, the girls have a better grasp of our system of play and will be able to add in a few wrinkles to help us become more potent and less predictable,” he said.
The group includes: Ashlen Burch, who has signed with Milligan College. In her freshman and sophomore years, she recorded eight goals and 15 assists and earned second Team All-Region accolades. In her junior season, Burch was second in points on the team scoring eight goals and three assists. She also was a part of three game winning goals during the 2017 season.
Kyia Williams was the Bruins leading goal scorer last season with 11 goals and 5 assists. Meghan Shelton also returns after being second in points with eight goals and five assists.
“We have a solid balance of youth and experience. Several new players will be able to fill some missing spots and can learn quickly from the older players. Our experience will position us to handle a difficult schedule and hopefully lead us into post-season play. Our defense is talented and simply needs game experience to learn to play together as a unit. We expect to improve in 2018 by allowing fewer goals against compared to a 2017 season that was one of our least productive in recent years,” Eschenmann said.
Blacksburg moves up to 4A this season and will have to go through a tough Salem team that was the 4A runner up last season. Cave Spring, according to Eschenmann, also returns the best goalkeeper in the district and will be difficult to score on.
Hidden Valley creates a new challenge for the Lady Bruins with a new coach with a familiar insight to the program. Cory Carroll takes over the Titans and is a longtime Blacksburg assistant.
Scott Duff is entering his fifth year at Christiansburg and is optimistic about a team that returns 15 players. Last year, the Blue Demons finished 9-8-0 and made a postseason appearance.
Christiansburg will have to replace the second leading scorer in the coach’s daughter, Abby Duff who notched six goals and eight assists and received first-team All-Conference 32 honors and Honorable Mention All-Region 3A West.
“We’re excited for the opportunities in front of us. We face a challenging schedule, but we have a great group of talented and athletic players who truly enjoy training together and competing together. They’re looking forward to getting the regular season started,” Duff said.
Those returners include: Morgan Mullens (20 goals, 4 assists, first team All- all-conference, second team all-region), Michaela Weber (3 goals, 4 assists, second team all-conference), Grace Martin (4 goals, Second Team all-conference), Brooke Simpkins (1 goal, 3 assists, honorable mention all-conference), Haley Bragg D (1 goal, 1 assist, second team all-conference), Carly Walden (honorable mention all-conference), Jasmine Kitts (5 Assists, honorable mention all-conference) and Addie Blaine (second team all-conference).
But there will home field advantage this season. Christiansburg will have to play all their games on the road this season because of work on the football stadium. The girls’ soccer team will play two home games at Auburn, five at Eastern Montgomery and two at Virginia Tech.
“It’s definitely unique as we’ll be getting on a bus for every one of our games this season, but it doesn’t alter our expectations or goals at all. We’ll keep our focus on the business at hand and that will be competing at our best no matter what field we’re on,” Duff said.
Ashley Moreno is in her fourth year at Auburn where she has compiled a 38-14-2 record including an impressive 13-2-1 last season. She lost four players to a team that won a contest in the postseason for the first time in school history.
Auburn moves to the Mt. Empire District this season and returns 11 starters including Alexis Gillie and Jessica Musselman.
“We are looking to work towards and have another successful season and are excited to compete against a handful of new teams this season and aim to be the team to beat this season,” Moreno said.
Brittnee Shantz is the coach of a new team at Eastern Montgomery and hopes to develop relationships and positive attitudes that will lead to winning games.
